Teens And Sleep...How Does Sleep Affect Learning?

Getting a good night's sleep is essential for brain health, and is especially important when learning and studying. 

According to researcher, Chris Evans, the most important function of sleep is to allow your brain to consider the new things that have been learned that day. Evans suggests that new learnings are filed and consolidated in the memory system during sleep.

Teenagers usually need more sleep than adults because their brains and bodies are going through significant growth and change. It is recommend that teenagers get around 9 ¼ hours of sleep to be their best. Lack of sleep affects brain function including mood, concentration, memory and problem solving ability.

Four Tips For a Great Night's Sleep:

1. Make your bedroom a haven for sleeping. It is essential to make your bedroom space calming and comfortable. The brain loves neat and tidy surroundings. Sleeping in an over busy, messy room can often stimulate the brain which makes it harder to relax; so, tidy up unfinished work, and clear the floor each day before going to sleep. Another tip is to turn your digital clock around so you cannot see the time. Turning your clock around is a good idea because the light shining in your room can stop the natural sleep process; and, secondly, you do not want to be continually checking the time because that can cause you stress over not sleeping. Lastly, ensure that your room is on the cool side rather than keeping it warmer. Studies show rooms 5-10 degrees lower than the average daytime temperature helps with sleep.

2. Avoid TV or screens before bed. The negative effects of screens on the brain right before bedtime is well documented. While checking your phone, or reading on a devise just before bed might seem natural enough, it is not a natural thing for your brain. When you are looking at an electronic screen, a stream of phonons from the screen tells your brain it is not time to go to sleep. In turn, this prevents the secretion of Melatonin, the chemical responsible for sleep timing and blood pressure regulation. Even just the small glow of the phone screen when you check the time at night can be enough to interrupt sleep patterns. The suggestion from the experts is to shut all electronic devices off at around 9pm. or an hour before you go to bed.

3. Be mindful about what you eat or drink before bed. Certain food can stimulate or diminish your ability to sleep. Foods to avoid before bed include spicy foods, caffeine and high fat foods. Instead choose foods that contain tryptophan such as turkey, eggs and milk which can help promote sleep. Nutritionist, Jessica Redmond, suggests it is best to avoid eating large meals in the hours leading up to bedtime. If you have to eat right before bed, eat a small meal or pre-portioned snack.

4. Start a bedtime routine. Dim the lights while you get ready for bed, or turn off bright overhead lamps and switch to a soft lamp. Your body is programmed to sleep when it’s dark. Additionally, it is important that you attempt to go to bed at the same time every night. Choose a time when you normally feel tired so you don’t toss and turn. Try not to break this routine on weekends when it may be tempting to stay up late. If you want to change your bedtime, help your body adjust by making the change in small daily increments, such as 15 minutes earlier or later each day. It can be tempting to burn the candle at both ends while studying; however, if you stick to a routine to get adequate sleep, it can maximise the learning you do while you are studying.

There's Even an App to Help!

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock ($1.99 iOS; $1.69 Android)

Getting the right amount of sleep is essential for students. You won't get a good grade on that test in first period without a good night's sleep. The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is based on years of research of sleep science. If you wake up from a deep-sleep phase, you will feel more tired. The app analyzes your sleep stages and wakes you up in your lightest sleep phase, giving you a night of peaceful sleep. You can set a 30-minute window for when the app can wake you up.

The app tracks your sleep quality over time and presents the data to you in graphs, which can then be exported to Excel. Its Sleep Notes show you how a stressful day or drinking coffee impacts your sleep quality.

Kristine Kilgour, M.Ed., LPSC

School Counselor & Mediator

rfhscounselor@gmail.com

Is Facebook Increasing Your Teenager's Anxiety Levels?

The Anxiety of Social Media

 Because we can now remain in constant contact with hundreds of so-called friends, even ones we rarely see in person, social media has changed the way many of us interact, espcially teenagers and young adults.

The impact of social media on our society has prompted researchers to investigate whether its effect is positive or negative on the mental health of peoplel abd one big area of focus in these studies is the effect of social media on mental health.

Recent research has shown that using social networking sites, namely Facebook, can increase people’s stress levels, produce anxiety, and negatively affect a person’s sense of self. Using these sites are thought to have the possibility of exacerbating, or even causing, a mental health disorder. It has been shown that social media even has the power to quickly spread moods around the world.

Social media sites provide places where people can create the face they want the world to see, which may, or may not, be accurate. Creating a profile allows a person to decide exactly what image to present to others. For some people, this can lead to a near-obsession. This could reflect a person’s self-esteem, according to one study.

This study looked into the association between a person’s self-esteem based upon the amount of time he or she spent on maintaining his or her profile, specifically looking at what actions they performed to create their online persona. The findings were that those with lower self-esteem cared more about what others had posted about them on Facebook, and were more likely to remove certain posts to ensure their profile remained a reflection of the image they wanted to portray. They might even constantly scan Facebook, as well as other networking sites, to ensure that there are no negative remarks or unflattering photos. On the other hand, those with higher self-esteem were found to spend time creating their own profile, and in adding pictures and information about themselves to show the world their ultimate persona.

Another study showed that Facebook increases people’s anxiety levels by making them feel inadequate which led to excess worry and stress. Social media provides constant updates, which can be extremely chaotic and stressful to the brain because many people begin to feel compelled to continually check their statuses and newsfeed on their mobile devices. For some people, the constant impulse to check for updates becomes obsessive.  In this particular study, over half of the respondents felt uneasy when they were unable to access their social media and email accounts.

Additionally, two-thirds of those surveyed had difficulty sleeping due to anxiety and other negative emotions that resulted in using the sites. Their constant updates were found to lead many respondents to frequently compare themselves to others which they found led to feelings of inadequacy, even depression. The anxiety and worry caused by the overuse of social media was found to lead to chronic stress that are known to lead to health problems, including mental health issues.

Another recent study found that Facebook also can increase the amount of social anxiety a person has upon meeting someone for the first time. It was hypothesized prior to this study that for those with social anxiety, looking at a person’s Facebook or other social media profile prior to meeting could help alleviate some of their feelings of nervousness. Reviewing someone’s social media profile, it was thought, is a way to get to know someone prior to meeting them. The opposite, however, was found to be the case. Other studies have shown that people with social anxiety prefer communicating with people via the Internet, which can lead to a lack of true socialization with others.

Another team of researchers performed an experiment to see whether reviewing a person’s Facebook profile before picking a person out of a picture would decrease anxiety levels. The researchers looked at the social anxiety levels of 26 female students between the ages of 18 and 20 using the Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS).

The participants had to interact with another student in one of four randomly assigned conditions while their skin response (which shows the body’s psychological arousal) was measured by electrodes on their ring and index finger. These prescribed conditions included Facebook only (memorizing student’s face from the profile page only), face-to-face only (a participant studied the student’s face in the same room), face-to-face and Facebook (study the Facebook photos and then meeting the person), and in person to Facebook (meeting a person face-to-face and then having to find their picture on Facebook). After being introduced to the other person, in one of these four manners they had to identify and circle the student in four different group pictures.

The researchers found that the participants who were first exposed to another student via Facebook, who then had to meet the other student in personm had increased psychological arousal, which means that they were more anxious. The researchers are not completely sure why this might be the case; however, they theorize that this might be due to the participants making comparisons between the other students and themselves when reviewing the Facebook profile. The participants may also have felt safer at first, but then became nervous knowing they had to meet the person in real life because there was already a basis of knowledge about the person,  Additional research is currently being done in this area.

Another phenomenon that has been found with the high use of Facebook is that it has the ability to affect one’s mood, and to even spread that mood globally, accordine to studies. Researchers have focused on weather patterns and their effect on a person’s mood. They found that when it rained in one location, making people feel gloomier and subsequently posting negative comments, a causal effect of an increase in bad moods occured in people who were friends with those people on Facebook but lived farther away, in places where it was not raining.

Of course, this mood transference can also have the opposite effect. For example, it has also been found that people whose friends posted cheery status updates tended also to have a more positive mood, at least reflected by their status posts. The researchers found that for every negative post, there were an extra 1.29 negative posts than normal in that person’s social networkm while happy posts had an even stronger effect, with every upbeat statement causing an extra 1.75 positive posts in the social network. It should be noted some of these researchers were Facebook employees.

There are studies that have found that Facebook actually can make people miserable. Researchers for this study looked at 82 young, frequent Facebook users, 53 female and 29 males. The participants were sent text messages with links to an online survey that asked how they felt, whether they were worried, if they felt lonely, how often they use Facebook, and how often they interacted directly with people.

The researchers found that when the participants increased their Facebook use, their state of well-being declined, while those who increased the amount of time they spent with people face to face had an increased sense of well-being.media sites on users.

Although social media sites like Facebook can cause problems, as recemt research has shown, these sites also have been shown to have some positive effects on people. Social media sites and statistics can help psychologists monitor the mental health of patients, spread awareness about issues (including mental health disorders), connect people with the same interests with one another, and make the world feel a little smaller.

Although there are many benefits, it is important to remember the possible downsides of social media sites, and their use. in order to help people who are vulnerable to self esteem and mental health problems, such as anxiety disorder or depression, to not develop or exacerbate existing problems due to use. The best way for anyone to take advantage of the benefits of these sites, while minimizing the downsides, is to moderate his or her use and maintain a level of detachment. Where social media is concered, moderation is definitely the key to happiness!